


the (boundless) complications of befriending the so-called "avengers"

by novoaa1



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Black Panther (2018), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers Family, Awesome Melinda May, BAMF Melinda May, Domestic Avengers, F/F, Humor, POV Okoye, Phil Coulson & Melinda May Friendship, Racism, Wakanda (Marvel), We love her, and like. she's right, and super underrated imo, as always, clint barton being an idiot, okoye is a gay mess it turns out, okoye is the best, she thinks the avengers are idiots, shes the cutest, ummm shuri is cute, ummmm, we been knew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 05:58:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20253289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: “Oh!” yelps Phil Coulson then, a knowing smile growing upon his age-lined cheeks that Okoye wouldn’t hesitate to smack off if she had even the remotest amount of energy for anything beyond helpless staring. “This is May. Melinda May.”Melinda May gives a sharp nod at that, her intense (breathtaking) brown-eyed gaze never leaving Okoye’s. “Nice to meet you,” she says, her voice low and husky and utterlyperfectin every sense of the word.She doesn’t reply, doesn’t nod, can’tmove… because, all she can think is: Oh,no.Oh,no.Or: Okoye thinks the Avengers are a group of bickering oversized toddlers, but T'Challa sends her to visit them anyways. She meets Melinda May, and... promptly devolves into a bout of spectacular Gay Panic.





	the (boundless) complications of befriending the so-called "avengers"

**Author's Note:**

> sdflkjsdlkfd dude i have no idea where this came from i didn't even ship these two until *checks watch* about 58 minutes ago
> 
> there's just not neaRly enough okoye stuff out there and also i haven't written about may as much as i want to
> 
> and then um this thing just kinda snowballed and i didn't spend too much time on it cause i have other stories but idk i thot it was a cute idea
> 
> (will probably come back to edit later, so sorry in advance for any mistakes...)
> 
> enjoy?

Okoye’s a simple woman: she wakes up most mornings around 6:00, pokes fun at T’Challa with the ecstatic help an ever-willing Shuri when (and _if_ ) time allows for it, and she loves her motherland of Wakanda with everything she has. 

(The best part, too, is that her love for her country is not blind… the farthest thing from it, actually. 

Okoye is skeptical, and shrewd, not to mention endlessly stubborn by nature. 

It took years for W’Kabi to convince her that marrying him would _not_, in fact, be a colossal mistake—and, it’s prudent to add here, she still thinks that that was a bit of an understatement, as understatements go. 

It took years to marry him, and it took years to finally admit that they were done, even after she’d held the perilous point of her spear to his neck and hashed out once and for all exactly where he stood in comparison to the nation of Wakanda. 

Suffice it all to say, she is not impulsive, nor is she ‘whimsical,’ in any sense. 

She is one who _endures_ above all else, because she’s come to understand that things are seldom what they seem—that _people_ are seldom what they seem. 

Still, she does not believe that that makes her complex, in any capacity; rather, she thinks it’s quite the opposite: she believes it makes her simple.

And, all too often, she thinks human beings make the foolhardy mistake of believing that 'simple’ is synonymous with ‘stupid,’ when absolutely nothing could be further from the truth.

In certain times, she'll find that being simple is unequivocally the most prudent state of being.

And thus, she clings to it like a newborn babe does its mother: that blessed simplicity that comforts her unquestionably when nothing else will, because she knows its worth is far greater than anything manmade coins and paper currency could ever buy.)

But, lately, things have become…. well, ‘complicated’ would be a far too generous way of putting it, she thinks.

It starts with Sergeant Barnes—the white man without an arm who comes seeking refuge under Wakanda’s protection—and it ends on a war-torn battlefield waging a seemingly everlasting battle against an oversized purple giant of a man who calls himself ‘Thanos.’

And, as for everything that comes in between the two?

Honestly, Okoye would rather not think about it. 

But, she’ll digress, because there are more important things at hand… namely, the aforementioned battle with the giant whom Shuri had proudly dubbed ‘Dionysus on bath salts’ (whatever _that’s_ supposed to mean).

Because, they win, but there’s a price: Tony Stark, the Man of Iron. 

She does not know him well; truthfully, she does not think that herself and this Tony Stark would have gotten along, had they chanced a meeting before his untimely end. 

From what little she observed, he was arrogant, and self-destructive, and ill-equipped to handle even the most gentle of criticisms… and, truly, she doesn’t personally believe that all that unpleasantness is excused simply by the facts that a) he was, admittedly, more than intelligent enough to warrant a sort of pride in his work (though, obviously, not to that extent, for his ego was something obscene), and b) if she had to guess, she’d place money on a bet that most (if not all) of Tony Stark’s overtly confident charisma was little more than a meticulously detailed front to conceal the enduring goodness at his very core. 

So, he was an infuriating yet kindhearted man, and although Okoye feels a sharp pain lancing through her heart as she watches him go, she does not wish the things it seems everyone wishes at a man’s funeral: that they had only talked to him more whilst he was alive, that they spent a greater summation of time gifting the entirety of their appreciation unto him, that they had garnered the effort to _know_ him better, period.

Tony Stark, deep in his soul, was a good man; still, Okoye does not think they’d have gotten along all that well. 

And, that’s okay. She will not force herself to mourn a man with false tears and hollow regrets; she thinks, if anything, that that would be the most severe injustice she could bestow upon his memory now that he is no longer amongst the living. 

No, she respects him far too much for that. 

She will not mourn Tony Stark, but she will light a candle in memoriam of Iron Man, the human that wielded the infinity stones on a gauntlet made of steel in an unquestionably suicidal bid to banish the greatest evil their world has ever seen. 

And, at the end of it all, she moves on. 

She wakes every morning at half past 6:00, exchanges idle banter with Shuri whilst they assist the nationwide effort to rebuild Wakanda, and, when T’Challa sends her as an emissary to the United States of America in the name of diplomacy (i.e. sharing technological blueprints, assisting the Americans’ damage control efforts, dropping in on the self-proclaimed ‘Avengers’ at their compound within the state of New York for a status update), she goes without complaint. 

She’s done this a couple times before: exchanged political niceties (underlaid un-subtly with threats on the American side of things), ignoring the way a fair portion of their general populous (predominantly those of Caucasian descent) stiffen visibly at the sight of her (racism is so primitive, she thinks, not to mention _irritating_ ), and entered the Avengers’ compound at the behest of their surprisingly well-mannered AI (FRIDAY, she believes it’s called) only to be roped unwittingly into what the tall star-spangled blonde man calls “Family Night” but what she just refers to as “white people shenanigans” in her head (because that’s exactly what it is).

This time, it’s different, if only slightly. 

She nods politely to the middle-aged white men who greet her, walks tall amidst the distasteful stares she receives from multiple small-minded individuals on the streets of New York, and takes all the time she can making her way over to the expansive field upon which the Avengers’ compound sits proudly under the light of day, emblazoned with a glorious (read: pretentious) ‘A’ to symbolize their… friendship? (If they are friends, they bicker far too resentfully with one another for her to tell.) Union? Teamwork? (Again, from what precious little Okoye has been made to observe, their teamwork is something atrocious.)

Either way. 

FRIDAY greets her with a polite, “Welcome back, General,” to which she responds with an equally pleasant, “Thank you, FRIDAY. I am happy to return.” (Does she mean it? Well… sort of.)

And, then, things go slightly off-book. 

(Okoye has never been a fan of things going ‘off-book.’)

She meets an, by all accounts, rather average-looking middle-aged man who calls himself ‘Phil Coulson.’

(It interests her that he chooses to introduce himself to someone of her stature under the moniker of ‘Phil,’ a title she knows very well to be short for ‘Phillip’ in American culture.

It’s… bold, no doubt. Perhaps even _sloppy_.

Still, he does not give off the impression of one who has the tendency to achieve things in a sloppy fashion.)

But, Phil Coulson is different—he has a kind look on his face, and a softness in hazel-brown eyes that Okoye hesitates to believe, but the way he looks at her… he’s not affronted, she can tell, so she knows he’s not among the rather unsavory racist grouping of Americans. 

And, yet, there’s more to it, too; not only is he not affronted by the sight of her, he seems almost _amused_ in some capacity, even as the considerable respect he shows for her appears genuine and unfeigned. 

He is an interesting man, this Phil Coulson. Perhaps (with a trenchant emphasis upon the word ‘perhaps’), Okoye would not mind lingering in this man’s presence for a spell longer, she decides. 

And, then… Then, she sees what is, unquestionably, the most glorious creature she has ever laid eyes upon. 

She’s short (shorter than Okoye by a good handful of centimeters—or, inches, she supposes Americans would say), and of East Asian descent, and, upon witnessing the stony expression on the woman's beautiful features as she single-handedly drags a loudly protesting (not to mention, _very_ well-muscled) man up to the two of them with a painful-looking hold on his ear, Okoye wonders if this is what it feels like to be truly, wholeheartedly _enraptured_.

She ignores Okoye for a while, instead choosing to turn to Phil Coulson with that icy (read: criminally attractive) expression of supreme displeasure and promptly launches into a rather long-winded (though mostly monotoned) rant about this or that or (presumably) the sandy-haired man she’d drug into the room by force—still, Okoye does not mind. At _all_. 

She releases the man mid-rant (he voices his obnoxious complaints the second she does so), and, a moment later Okoye has the belated realization that he is the archer who calls himself ‘Hawkeye,’ a man with whom she’d fought beside in their war against Thanos. 

But, still, amidst it all, she’s nothing short of transfixed by this gorgeous fiery woman who’s just halted her speech (evidently she’s finished, now) to fix Phil Coulson with a displeased stare, seeming to communicate entire paragraphs of dialogue with the man at the slightest raise of her (impeccably-plucked) eyebrows or tightening of her (delectably pink) lips. 

And, all too soon, she’s huffing out a sigh and turning back to growl “Leave. _Now_,” at a wide-eyed Hawkeye, who immediately scampers off through the doorway and around the corner with a decidedly inelegant high-pitched squeak, apparently eager to get away and out of sight as soon as humanly possible before this angelic being decides to kick his ass.

(Honestly, Okoye does not much blame him.)

But, then, the angelic being in question is turning to face Okoye with that trademark (knee-weakening) unimpressed stare (even if Okoye is a good half-foot taller than she is), and she idly thinks that as soon as she returns to Wakanda she’ll have to consult Shuri for a lengthy check-up, because there is no _way_ her racing heartbeat at the current moment is anything shy of life-threatening tachycardia.

“Oh!” yelps Phil Coulson then, a knowing smile growing upon his age-lined cheeks that Okoye wouldn’t hesitate to smack off if she had even the remotest amount of energy for anything beyond helpless staring. “This is May. Melinda May.”

Melinda May gives a sharp nod at that, her intense (_breathtaking_) brown-eyed gaze never leaving Okoye’s. “Nice to meet you,” she says, her voice low and husky and utterly _perfect_ in every sense of the word. 

She doesn’t reply, doesn’t nod, can’t _move_… because, all she can think is: Oh, _no_. 

_Oh, no_. 

Okoye is—_was_—a simple woman. Until… well, until she met the disastrous team of super-powered ignominious morons who fancy themselves ‘the Avengers.’

And, now… now, she doesn’t think her life will ever be quite so simple ever again. 

— —

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think?
> 
> also here’s the link to my


End file.
